Have you ever just painted carefree and filled up a page with colour?

Recently my daughter introduced me to collage, and the beauty of piecing together painted pieces of paper to create art. She follows a well known artist, Clover Robin, who uses collage brilliantly in her artwork. She is a surface pattern designer and illustrator who lives in England. We have purchased several of her pieces and love her work.

In the classroom, my teaching partner and I have explored Eric Carle and his collage illustrations with our kindergarten students. It was so interesting to learn that he too uses different media and textures to create his illustrations. He then stores the papers in like-colours to use when creating his beautiful, detailed illustrations for his children’s books. As a class, we explored texture and colour with paint and different types of combs and pattern-making supplies. The students then transformed their paintings into collaged flowers inspired by the book, The Tiny Seed. They turned out beautifully and the students gained a better understanding of the creation process.

I was inspired and created these spring flower collages that I wanted to share. The next step that I would like to explore is to try layering and overlapping with the collage pieces to create a more elaborate design.